Comedy Caravan invites you to Show Your Shorts
at Film Festival

FILM CLIPS

Curt Tofteland, left, and Sammie Byron star in "Shakespeare
Behind Bars." The film, which will be available on DVD tomorrow,
goes inside the Luther Luckett Correctional Institute in La Grange, Ky.,
where inmates perform Shakespeare's plays.

YouTube.com has everything from head-butting spoofs of French soccer
player Zinedine Zidane to beatboxing parrots and spy-hopping whales. If
you haven't visited the popular Web site and seen those short videos or
if you've never heard of beatboxing or spy hopping, take a few minutes
to check them out.

When you are finished, Louisville's Comedy Caravan Film Festival invites you to
leave your self-imposed solitary confinement in front of the computer
screen and join its Wednesday night audience for a new film series
called Show Your Shorts, which the club describes as like YouTube but
with a live audience.

Featured films by Louisvillians will include "The Wheelchair
Defender," a 50-minute movie about video gamers by Evan Peters, and
several surreal shorts by Pam Swisher, a video artist and performer with
the local troupe Grotesque Burlesque.

Also, two films by Zak Becher and Tony Holcomb will be shown. They
are "Pierre," about a French boy's fight with a supernatural
being, and "The Marvel World," a parody of the real world with
Marvel Comic characters.

Showtime at Comedy Caravan, 1250 Bardstown Road, is 10 p.m. Tickets
are $5 at the door. You will receive a $2 discount when you order online
at www.comedycaravan.com.
The minimum age for the show is 18.

"Clerks II" -- New Jersey residents Dante and Randal
(Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson) are out of the Quick Stop and stuck
in Mooby's, a fast-food purgatory, in Kevin Smith's sequel to his 1994
indie hit. Rosario Dawson co-stars, and slackers Jay and Silent Bob
(Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) make appearances.

"Lady in the Water" -- M. Night Shyamalan
("Signs") wants to creep you out again. This time he's written
and directed a tale about an apartment superintendent (Paul Giamatti)
who rescues a young woman (Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of director Ron
Howard) from a swimming pool and discovers that she's a character from a
bedtime story.

"Monster House" -- Motion-capture animation, a
digital technique used to create "The Polar Express," is the
method employed for this story about teenagers who unlock the secret of
a crotchety neighbor's house. It features the voices of Steve Buscemi,
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Nick Cannon.

"My Super Ex-Girlfriend" -- Luke Wilson, younger
brother of actors Owen and Andrew, co-stars with Uma Thurman in this
comedy about a guy who tries to scrap his possessive, needy girlfriend
only to come face-to-face with her super powers. Directed by Ivan
Reitman, who also directed "Ghostbusters" and produced
"Old School."

"Shakespeare Behind Bars" You've read about the
award-winning documentary that takes viewers inside Luther Luckett
Correctional Complex, a medium-security prison in La Grange, Ky., where
inmates formed a theater company to perform Shakespeare's works. Now you
can see why the film by Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller impressed
audiences at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was a nominee for the
grand jury prize in 2005.

The documentary follows Louisville's Curt Tofteland, producing
artistic director of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, and the prison's
troupe of Shakespearean players as they rehearse and reveals how art can
transform lives. The prison theater program, initiated by Tofteland, is
funded by donations to the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival.

Other DVD releases: "Tsotsi," this year's Academy
Award winner for best foreign film; "Clean," starring Maggie
Cheung as a woman struggling with her mistakes and regrets; "Ren
& Stimpy, The Lost Episodes"; "Don't Move," an
Italian romance starring Penelope Cruz; "Road House," the 1989
movie that featured pretty boy Patrick Swayze as the bouncer of the
Double Deuce Club with Kelly Lynch as the town doctor; and "Pee-Wee
Herman -- Live at the Roxy Theatre," which features comic actor
Paul Reuben on the Sunset Strip stage with his puppets, original music
and live-action pals.

Every Monday in Features, Judith Egerton scopes out the week's movie
news -- at theaters, on DVD and in the filmmaking scene. You can reach
her at (502) 582-4503 or jegerton
(at ) courier-journal.com.